Comment on "An excess of massive stars in the local 30 Doradus starburst"

25 Jul 2018  ·  Will M Farr, Ilya Mandel ·

Schneider et al. (Science, 2018) used an ad hoc statistical method in their calculation of the stellar initial mass function. Adopting an improved approach, we reanalyse their data and determine a power law exponent of $2.05_{-0.14}^{+0.13}$. Alternative assumptions regarding data set completeness and the star formation history model can shift the inferred exponent to $2.11_{-0.19}^{+0.17}$ and $2.15_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$, respectively.

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Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability